[R] On "^" returning a matrix when operated on a data.frame

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 13-11-13 6:52 PM, Arunkumar Srinivasan wrote:
> Duncan,
> Thank you. What I meant was that "^" is the only *arithmetic operator*
> to result in a matrix on operating in a data.frame. I understand it's
> quite old code. Also, your explanation makes sense, with the exception
> of "/" operator, I suppose (I could be wrong here).

You're right, "/", "%/%" and "%%" also return consistent types.  So my 
explanation is wrong.  The NEWS entry for this change appears to be in 
the 0.63 release,

     o	Ops.data.frame :  things like  d.fr < a	  now return a matrix

That doesn't give much of a hint for why "^" is handled differently than 
"/".

Duncan Murdoch

> Arun
>
> On Thursday, November 14, 2013 at 12:32 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>
>>
>> It's not just ^ that is missing, the logical relations like <, ==, etc
>> also return matrices. This is very old code (I think from 1999), but I
>> would guess that the reason is that the ^ and < operators always return
>> values of a single type (numeric and logical respectively), whereas the
>> other operators can take mixed type inputs and return mixed type outputs.
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>>> Please let me know if I should be posting this to R-devel list instead.
>>>
>>> Thank you very much,
>>> Arun
>>>
>>>
>>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
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